Men's Rights

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Talk story about Supreme Court nominee Ruth Bader Ginsburg and a sex-discrimination case that she became involved with in the seventies which then set a precident on the Supreme Court. In 1976 Fred Gilbert, a lawyer in Tulsa, and Ginsburg persuaded the Supreme Court to quash, as unconstitutional, an Oklahoma law forbidding the sale of 3.2 per cent beer to men under the age of twenty-one. In Oklahoma at that time, women were allowed to buy 3.2 beer from the age of eighteen but men had to wait until they were three years older before they could purchase the stuff. The law was challenged by two students at Oklahoma State University, in Stillwater, one of whom, Curtis Craig recalled last week, that the law was embarrassing. "You had to send your girlfriend in to buy beer." Mr. Gilbert lost in the first round in federal court and appealed to the Supreme Court. That is when Ms. Ginsburg got involved. Gilbert says that there weren't many people involved in sex-discrimination cases in those days, and Ms. Ginsburg was very bothered and bewildered that they had initially lost. Ms. Ginsburg was then a professor at Columbia Law School and also a general counsel for the American Civil Liberties Union, decided to file a brief on Mr. Craig's behalf. Professor Ginsburg had decided one of the best ways to win equal rights for women was to bring cases where the victims of discrimination were men. Tells about the Supreme Court hearing on October 5, 1976. The Court reversed the lower court's decision and ruled the law unconstitutional. Tells about Justice Brennan's opinion.